Reflections, commentaries, critiques and ideas from 40 years experience in the fields of Community Development, Community Education and Social Justice. Useful tools and techniques that I have learnt also added occassionally.

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The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Tuesday, 9 August 2016

Happy Polluters

The Happy Planet Index formula

This week two events occurred that need to be thought of together. The
World Happiness Report 2016 was released, and on 8 August the Earth
reached Overshoot Day. The first, obviously, reports on human
happiness. The second is a chronological recognition of the day that we humans
have used up more resources and added more waste than the Earth can sustain for
that year.

Why think of these together? What comfort is it if we are becoming more and
more happy if we are polluting the very system that sustains us and allows us to
seek lives of happiness and well-being?

The World Happiness Report is the fourth to be released – the first
one being in 2012. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the happiest nations on Earth are
the western-styled nations, with the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Iceland,
Norway, Finland, Sweden) along with Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, New
Zealand and Australia making up the top 10.

At the other end of the scale the bottom 10 are made up of eight African
nations, plus Afghanistan and Syria. Undoubtedly the war in these two nations
have significant impacts upon the happiness levels of people living in those
nations.

However, a table in the World Happiness Report traces the changes in
happiness from 2005-07 to 2013-15. It is noteworthy that all of the top 10
happiest nations had either no increase in their happiness levels in that time,
or decreased in happiness.

Yet, as Overshoot Day illustrates, in that time we have consumed
more and more and wasted more and more. In 2005 Overshoot Day was 29 August,
and in 2013 it fell on 10 August – almost three weeks earlier.

Overshoot Day is calculated by comparing our ecological footprint
with our biocapacity1 and determining when our ecological footprint
overshoots our biocapacity. If we look at the ecological footprint on a per
capita country-by-country basis then a disturbing fact emerges. Of the ten
happiest nations on Earth, all of them are in the top 31 most unsustainable
nations on Earth in terms of their ecological impact. In fact, three of them,
Australia (2nd), Canada (4th) and Sweden (9th) are amongst the ten most
unsustainable nations on Earth (per capita).

Are we in the western-styled nations exulting in our happiness at the expense
of an ever unhappier planet?

Our consuming and wasting lifestyles are not providing us with greater levels
of happiness. Indeed, it could be asked whether the deterioration of the
eco-system that we live in has a negative impact upon our happiness levels? if
that is true, then indications are that levels of depression, anxiety and
suicide are likely to continue to rise over the coming decades.

This all begs the question: can we be happy and live sustainable lives at the
same time?

Another index is helpful when considering how to answer this question. The
Happy Planet Index(HPI) produced by the new economics
foundation in the UK combines four elements to calculate the HPI. The
four elements are: well-being, life expectancy, inequality of outcomes, and
ecological footprint.

When this formula is applied on a country-by-country basis we get an
altogether different picture of the relationship between happiness and
sustainability. Those top ten happiest nations slip embarrassingly backward.
Highest is Norway at 12th, but then the rest fare badly indeed with Sweden at
61st, Canada 85th and Australia not even making the top 100 – at 105th. 140
nations make up the HPI listing.

At the top of the rankings (for the third time) is Costa Rica which abolished
its army in 1949 and diverted defence spending to education, health, and
pensions. The Caribbean nation obtains 99% of it’s electricity from renewable
resources and has committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2021.

It would seem that it is possible for humans to be happy and for the planet
to be happy also. It takes commitment. Do we have it?

Notes:

1. Ecological footprint is defined as the area of biologically productive
land and water required to produce all the resources a population consumes plus
the ability to absorb the waste it generates. Biocapacity refers to the
capacity of ecosystems to regenerate what people demand from these systems. It
is the capacity to produce the biological materials used by humans and absorb
the waste material generated by humans.

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About Me

I have almost 40 years experience working (paid and unpaid, government and non-government) in community development/education and social justice fields. I have continued to keep myself abreast of philosophies and theories in these and related fields. This blogsite will offer ideas, thoughts, reflections on these fields as well as giving some tools and techniques. I don't pretend that these will be original but I do hope that they will be able to translate some of these diverse ideas into coherent forms accessible to workers in the areas.